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 His Master's Voice wrote:


That's fashion. I'm talking about the technical quality of an optimal list in relation to every other optimal list, which has nothing to do with how popular any of those are.

No. Because there is no "single" optimal list, because all lists are contingent on the "meta game". If nobody in your "meta-game" (assuming its a local one for simplicity) uses Melta-weapons, AV14 is highly optimal. Once more and more AV14 appear, people will load up on melta. Once people see lots of melta, they downgrade to AV11 and more long-range that negates the melta-advantage, etc.. .

There is no absolute "optimum" in 40K. The "global" metagame is more difficult to study perhaps, but it is also just "fashion" and "countering the fashion with the next fashion" to get to the top tables.

 Hulksmash wrote:

4th Edition Eldar Skimmer Spam ugliness/Early 5th Edition Seer Council Shenanigans
4th Edition Tyranid MC list
Late 4th and all through 5th Edition Orks
Space Wolves

See, all 4 of those codexes were pretty dominant in their edition and one of them made it through 2 editions so far and is still pretty good in it's 3rd. Heck, Eldar are still competing in their 3rd edition.

In other words Kelly writes good codexes. The only one that people call "balanced" and consider not power is Dark Eldar. And in 5th that was mostly because people didn't understand the list and in 6th still don't.

So, once again, this book is gonna be fine. It'll probably take a month or two but expect it to be an insane book once you dive in.

One power build and loads of chaff isn't my idea of a good codex. This one looks to be marginally better than the GavDex but even in the meager amount of scans we have so far there are obvious useless choices and subpar units, with Tzeentch seemingly being even worse off than before, Noise Marines being relegated strictly to static gunline duty, horrendously overpriced AV12 walkers, etc.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:

4th Edition Eldar Skimmer Spam ugliness/Early 5th Edition Seer Council Shenanigans
4th Edition Tyranid MC list
Late 4th and all through 5th Edition Orks
Space Wolves

See, all 4 of those codexes were pretty dominant in their edition and one of them made it through 2 editions so far and is still pretty good in it's 3rd. Heck, Eldar are still competing in their 3rd edition.

In other words Kelly writes good codexes. The only one that people call "balanced" and consider not power is Dark Eldar. And in 5th that was mostly because people didn't understand the list and in 6th still don't.

So, once again, this book is gonna be fine. It'll probably take a month or two but expect it to be an insane book once you dive in.

One power build and loads of chaff isn't my idea of a good codex. This one looks to be marginally better than the GavDex but even in the meager amount of scans we have so far there are obvious useless choices and subpar units, with Tzeentch seemingly being even worse off than before, Noise Marines being relegated strictly to static gunline duty, horrendously overpriced AV12 walkers, etc.

Right, but how does having some useless units make Chaos worse than anybody else? Last I looked almost every Codex or Army Book from GW had quite an amount of useless units.

Ok I thought the mauler fiend would suck do to grenades...primarily haywire until realizes the tentacles negate one attack per model in base....WHICH IS HUGELY BROKEN if true lol. SO if this is how it works you can't use grenades on those damn things.

12" move AND fleet for 125 base, assume 10pts for the tentacle.... WOW!

Also. Woah. That photo with Typhus' page.

Can anyone make out that Mastery level?

Has he become Mastery Level 3 ?!

Considering all the Nurgle powers are Warp Charge 1 - Oh lord. Use those and the Force weapon....!!!

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

Right, but how does having some useless units make Chaos worse than anybody else? Last I looked almost every Codex or Army Book from GW had quite an amount of useless units.

Fair enough, but I think of all Codexes Chaos should be done to a higher standard because it has 9 and more armies crammed into one book. The BA or SW Codex have some bad units but you can still play a BA or SW army. When CSM have a bad unit, it shuts down a whole sub-faction. A terrible Thousand Sons unit doesn't just mean you pick another unit and move on, it means you can't play that legion at all without critically handicapping yourself.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Red Corsair wrote:
Ok I thought the mauler fiend would suck do to grenades...primarily haywire until realizes the tentacles negate one attack per model in base....WHICH IS HUGELY BROKEN if true lol. SO if this is how it works you can't use grenades on those damn things.

12" move AND fleet for 125 base, assume 10pts for the tentacle.... WOW!

If think you should know by now these things always come with the caveat "down to a minimum of 1"

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

 His Master's Voice wrote:

Nvs wrote:
They really only have 1 realistic list which

For each metagame, each codex will produce one, and only one, optimal list. The only reason people think a codex can produce several different, equally powerful lists is because they do not understand how to evaluate the metagame and optimize their roster.

Or maybe people want to have fun and have an army set up the way that they would like to. My battlebuddy runs Black Templars and has been told several times, both here and in person, that he runs his list incorrectly. With a ridiculous win record, and three Ard Boyz titles, I think he's doing just fine.

The reason there are multiple units per FOC slot is so that people may play the way they want. Why does every list have to be for maximum viability or whatever crap means "your army list isn't right".

I, for one, am lookong forward to the new Chaos codex. The random factor will make it pretty cool.

THIS, right here. I run what I run regardless of what's competitive and I enjoy a good bit of success. 5/6 at ATC in 2011, and got a semifinal slot at ard boys with a list that I've been criticized at every turn.

I'm also looking forward to the new codex, yeah basic chaos marines are no grey hunters but neither are basic Marines or Blood Angel Tacticals or Black Templar Initiates or even Dark Angel Tacticals. Fact is that Grey hunters are probably the most efficient troops for point cost amongst MEQs. Chaos is getting 13 point bolter/bolt pistol marines and for another 3 points each they can have +1 leadership, hatred (marines), and the extra CCW (or just don't take the bolter and bam you're still 14 point marines). So for the same points for a standard marine chaos get bolter bolt pistol and chainsword and hatred instead of ATSKNF. Granted I'd love ATSKNF but it doesn't make sense for chaos, they DO know fear, they've seen their gods and know how terrible they are.

Why does every codex has to be built better than every before, why do we have to clamor for more codex creep every time. It's a game not a sport, just cause your team isn't the best since the '91 cowboys doesn't mean you won't have fun playing, it doesn't mean you WON'T win all the time. I've seen eldar players go undefeated through 5th, I've seen GK and necron players get rocked by tau and deathwing. Codices are a crutch for mediocre players, simple answer, get better and go whup on people with a subpar codex and laugh

Hey solo, "Battlebuddy"? Ever spend any time at jackson, leonard, knox, benning or shank?

Also, let us not forget for +25 points you can get an Icon for the squad.

And make them all Fearless.

Since Fearless really has no downsides in 6th....

I am trying to read these pictures and so far I can only see that CSM are troops, are there any other troop choices? Can you take chosen or 1k sons as troops etc?

haroon wrote:
I am trying to read these pictures and so far I can only see that CSM are troops, are there any other troop choices? Can you take chosen or 1k sons as troops etc?

cultists are troops.
Abaddon makes chosen troops.
HQ's with a mark make that cult troop.

haroon wrote:
I am trying to read these pictures and so far I can only see that CSM are troops, are there any other troop choices? Can you take chosen or 1k sons as troops etc?

chosen if you take Abby, and tsons if you take a sorceror or lord with mark of tzneetch and so on. Cultists are a basic choice as well.

 carabine wrote:

haroon wrote:
I am trying to read these pictures and so far I can only see that CSM are troops, are there any other troop choices? Can you take chosen or 1k sons as troops etc?

chosen if you take Abby, and tsons if you take a sorceror or lord with mark of tzneetch and so on. Cultists are a basic choice as well.

Could you theoretically compose your troop section with six squads of Chosen marines, each with 5 special weapons and a champ, if you take Abby? If so, that's a lot of melta/plasma spam.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

Right, but how does having some useless units make Chaos worse than anybody else? Last I looked almost every Codex or Army Book from GW had quite an amount of useless units.

Fair enough, but I think of all Codexes Chaos should be done to a higher standard because it has 9 and more armies crammed into one book. The BA or SW Codex have some bad units but you can still play a BA or SW army. When CSM have a bad unit, it shuts down a whole sub-faction. A terrible Thousand Sons unit doesn't just mean you pick another unit and move on, it means you can't play that legion at all without critically handicapping yourself.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Red Corsair wrote:
Ok I thought the mauler fiend would suck do to grenades...primarily haywire until realizes the tentacles negate one attack per model in base....WHICH IS HUGELY BROKEN if true lol. SO if this is how it works you can't use grenades on those damn things.

12" move AND fleet for 125 base, assume 10pts for the tentacle.... WOW!

If think you should know by now these things always come with the caveat "down to a minimum of 1"

Umm.....see page one actually. According to that there is no caviet unless they ERRATA it later

Has there been any mention yet of what types of units can deep strike without scattering on CSM icons?

 carabine wrote:


Why does every codex has to be built better than every before, why do we have to clamor for more codex creep every time. It's a game not a sport, just cause your team isn't the best since the '91 cowboys doesn't mean you won't have fun playing, it doesn't mean you WON'T win all the time.

Every codex certainly should not be better than the last one, but they -should- aim for a similar feasibility and point/reward ratio. Suppose you have an amazing, flexible Heavy Support option for 140 points/unit in your dex. Then the next two books give popular armies stronger, even more flexible similar units for 110 points a pop. Did your guys change? No. Is your situation worse? Yes.

Likewise, getting new stuff that does not compare to what is already out there and established is a drain. You are paying more/getting less for your investment than someone else. In 5th this could be somewhat explained by army-specific flavor (GKs are amazing for what they pack, but they are really short-ranged!/IG has tons of big guns and orders and stuff, but they suck at CC!). In 6th, with allies, that has pretty much gone out the window and everyine but Nids can get almost everything.

This makes the issue worse, not better, because now people can just skip their sub-optimal choices and get the gravy if the matrix lets them: why pick boring Ultramarine tacticals when you can drag sweet Grey Hunters in (with a better psyker to boot!), Tau suck at CC but their TH/SS buddies certainly don't, and so on.

So far, Chaos seems fun but...oddly mismatched. Makes me wonder, as most GW books do, if it was playtested at all beyond a few sessions in the back room.

So I am thinking triple dragon triple mauler fiends lists. 915 pts is a steal for that.

Start that oval base sideways to cheat 2 extra inches on deployment, that plus 12" move and a turn one 3" average run gets you 29" up field. Turn two dragons arrive to burn and vector and the Mauler fiends have an average threat range of 21(thanks to fleet) inches ignoring terrain!!!!!!


Edit: Math durp

I haven't seen much mentioned about Chosen marines? Are they any good in this incarnation of Codex Chaos Space Marine? Inquiring minds want to know!

 Chaplain Pallantide wrote:
I haven't seen much mentioned about Chosen marines? Are they any good in this incarnation of Codex Chaos Space Marine? Inquiring minds want to know!

I don't think much has changed fundamentally other then the extra attack but nerf to LD. They still have insane options per guy but are going to get expensive quick. Abby making them troops could be fun though.

 Red Corsair wrote:
Umm.....see page one actually. According to that there is no caviet unless they ERRATA it later

You know what "summary' means, right?

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:
Umm.....see page one actually. According to that there is no caviet unless they ERRATA it later

You know what "summary' means, right?

You know that "to a minimum of 1" fits there quite nicely and would be half the rule right?

Ugh... just noticed where some of those savings on troops came from... chaos marines no longer automatically come with close combat weapons...

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:

4th Edition Eldar Skimmer Spam ugliness/Early 5th Edition Seer Council Shenanigans
4th Edition Tyranid MC list
Late 4th and all through 5th Edition Orks
Space Wolves

See, all 4 of those codexes were pretty dominant in their edition and one of them made it through 2 editions so far and is still pretty good in it's 3rd. Heck, Eldar are still competing in their 3rd edition.

In other words Kelly writes good codexes. The only one that people call "balanced" and consider not power is Dark Eldar. And in 5th that was mostly because people didn't understand the list and in 6th still don't.

So, once again, this book is gonna be fine. It'll probably take a month or two but expect it to be an insane book once you dive in.

One power build and loads of chaff isn't my idea of a good codex. This one looks to be marginally better than the GavDex but even in the meager amount of scans we have so far there are obvious useless choices and subpar units, with Tzeentch seemingly being even worse off than before, Noise Marines being relegated strictly to static gunline duty, horrendously overpriced AV12 walkers, etc.

Maybe this is just my opinion... GW doesn't design for power builds or optimized lists... they design things such that the average unit is average. They balance through mediocraty and its only for people power gaming that things seem imbalanced... That *gasp* playing the game outside of how the designer expects you to leads to things not playing the way they expect things to. The game is only balanced when no one is min-maxing. Thus I think its the players who break the game, not the designers.

I agree with the idea you can't really have more than one optimal list since the very notion of optimization is a bit of a singularity. What does changes is what you're optimized for, metagame changes and people re-adjust their optimization, but there remains only a single true optimization.

 aka_mythos wrote:
Maybe this is just my opinion... GW doesn't design for power builds or optimized lists... they design things such that the average unit is average. They balance through mediocraty and its only for people power gaming that things seem imbalanced... That *gasp* playing the game outside of how the designer expects you to leads to things not playing the way they expect things to. The game is only balanced when no one is min-maxing. Thus I think its the players who break the game, not the designers.

A good designer that playtests properly purposely breaks the system to find out what isn't balanced to the average so that EVERYTHING can balanced to the average, not so that only the one average thing is balanced to the average. If the system has "must haves" because it's not balanced and/or playtested properly, that's the designers failing to do their job properly.

If your game requires players to play how YOU want them to instead of how they want to, that's poor design. You may as well have predetermined army lists instead of an army book with options by that point.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Ugh... just noticed where some of those savings on troops came from... chaos marines no longer automatically come with close combat weapons...

Ja LD 7, bolter and bolt pistol. gotta pay 2 points for the extra CCW or give up the bolter and get it for free.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:
Maybe this is just my opinion... GW doesn't design for power builds or optimized lists... they design things such that the average unit is average. They balance through mediocraty and its only for people power gaming that things seem imbalanced... That *gasp* playing the game outside of how the designer expects you to leads to things not playing the way they expect things to. The game is only balanced when no one is min-maxing. Thus I think its the players who break the game, not the designers.

A good designer that playtests properly purposely breaks the system to find out what isn't balanced to the average so that EVERYTHING can balanced to the average, not so that only the one average thing is balanced to the average. If the system has "must haves" because it's not balanced and/or playtested properly, that's the designers failing to do their job properly.

GW has atleast on one occasion in the past that their playtesting is all done in house with the devs etc. Which is the WORST kind of playtesting ever.

Sigh, Havocs are the only ones with Flakk Missiles.
Havocs box only comes with one missile launcher
Chaos Marines Box does not come with any missile launchers
Devastator squad only comes with one missile launcher
Tac Squad only comes with one missile launcher

I only have two missile launchers right now :(

Suck.

 Red Corsair wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:
Umm.....see page one actually. According to that there is no caviet unless they ERRATA it later

You know what "summary' means, right?

You know that "to a minimum of 1" fits there quite nicely and would be half the rule right?

There is no page one lol.

It does reduce attacks to zero but only to the models in base contact. The guys in the back can still use their grenades. It is a reduction however.

 Rivet wrote:
Sigh, Havocs are the only ones with Flakk Missiles.
Havocs box only comes with one missile launcher
Chaos Marines Box does not come with any missile launchers
Devastator squad only comes with one missile launcher
Tac Squad only comes with one missile launcher

I only have two missile launchers right now :(

Suck.

www.thewarstore.com

 carabine wrote:

 Rivet wrote:
Sigh, Havocs are the only ones with Flakk Missiles.
Havocs box only comes with one missile launcher
Chaos Marines Box does not come with any missile launchers
Devastator squad only comes with one missile launcher
Tac Squad only comes with one missile launcher

I only have two missile launchers right now :(

Suck.

www.thewarstore.com

Good thing I have six. $8.99 for a single missile launcher is horse gak. I suppose you could use the Cadian ones but they might look odd.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:
Maybe this is just my opinion... GW doesn't design for power builds or optimized lists... they design things such that the average unit is average. They balance through mediocraty and its only for people power gaming that things seem imbalanced... That *gasp* playing the game outside of how the designer expects you to leads to things not playing the way they expect things to. The game is only balanced when no one is min-maxing. Thus I think its the players who break the game, not the designers.

A good designer that playtests properly purposely breaks the system to find out what isn't balanced to the average so that EVERYTHING can balanced to the average, not so that only the one average thing is balanced to the average. If the system has "must haves" because it's not balanced and/or playtested properly, that's the designers failing to do their job properly.

If your game requires players to play how YOU want them to instead of how they want to, that's poor design. You may as well have predetermined army lists instead of an army book with options by that point.

That assumes that the type of balance is even achievable or desirable to an author who's emphasis is casual story driven game play. On a certain level I believe GW's mentality is that you should only use unit "X" when it fits a narrative, and if that unit is an uber-broken wipe the table clean killing machine the fact that the narrative is maintained is what's important. Or if a unit is just naturally outgunned and gets consistently whiped that's just how the narrative plays out. That's why balance doesn't matter as much to them... they aren't playing the game the same way.

Don't get me wrong, I think GW does a pretty poor job of play testing... What I'm talking about is that they're designing the game with a particular type of game play in mind thats more casual and where unit design isn't always about being practical or useful. I think a perfect example is several pages back when someone was complaining that Berzerkers axes are only AP4 and are thus only useful against light infantry hordes... but that's just like their fluff. In many instance some of the sub-optimal game designs are because they are also trying to reconcile fluff.

 thenoobbomb wrote:
This 'dex will be solid anyways, since it's written' by Phil 'Sidebeard'(from the WD ) Kelly.
And people will not complain about it being OP.

13 point marines will definitely elicit some OP cries.